A second policy briefing was organized in Kyiv by EU-STRAT’s local partner, the Ukrainian Institute for Public Policy (UIPP). The briefing, entitled “Political economy of EU legislation harmonization with Ukraine and other Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries” took place on 12 November 2018 on the premises of and in partnership with the National Academy for Public Administration of Ukraine. Panelists and keynote speakers were drawn from the Ukrainian research and business community: Natalia Palamarchuk, professor of the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration, Svitlana Mykhailovska, Deputy Director of European Business Association, Dmytro Naumenko, analyst at Ukrainian Centre for European Policy, Taras Kachka, strategic advisor at International Renaissance Foundation, Klaudijus Maniokas, chairman of the ESTEP board and EU-STRAT partner, and Ildar Gazizullin from UIPP. Maxim Boroda, Director of UIPP, opened the briefing with a short presentation on EU-STRAT’s objectives and the briefing’s topic.

Here are some of the discussions that took place, with a full report to follow later this month in EU-STRAT’s newsletter…

How EaP countries balance costs and benefits of legal approximation

Klaudijus Maniokas presented some of the findings from EU-STRAT’s case studies on the legislation harmonization of the Association Agreement (AA) with the EU and selected EaP countries in the area of transport, energy, environment (TEE). While legal approximation in TEE contributues to increased connectivity (both in terms of trade and mobility), it is also associated with high costs, for example, related to safety standards. Therefore, countries often seek to reach a compromise to balance perceived costs and benefits of legal approximation, ensuring that the EU acquis are conducive to addressing their development needs as well. This is done by prioritization of the harmonization process, which involves limiting or even stopping process in areas with high approximation costs.

The progress with transposition and implementation in TEE in the EaP countries is uneven, but is arguably better than could be expected. An ongoing informal adjustment of the AA reduces the scope of the commitments taken, as in the case of road worthiness in Georgia, electricity unbundling in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as transport and environment in Ukraine. The EU conditionality, however, seems to be effective in Ukraine on a number of reforms that directly relate to Kyiv’s interests, such as reform of the gas sector, which reduces dependence on Russia.

The effects of interdependencies in Ukraine’s energy sector on domestic reforms

Ildar Gazizullin presented developments of Ukraine’s interdependence in the gas and electricity markets and how this has contributed to applying EU legislative norms in sectoral reforms. Complex interdependence between Russia and Ukraine in terms of transit and supply of gas has had a strong impact on security and economic relations between the countries. Ukraine implemented a number of polices to reduce its energy dependence, including steps to increase imports of gas from the EU and energy market reforms in line with the EU aquis. The role of the EU has increased, both as a blueprint for reforms, but also as a mediator in gas disputes with Moscow.

EU demands for greater transparency in the energy sector also target rent-seeking behaviour by business and political elites. Hence, increasing energy prices implies additional costs (or foregone benefits) for both citizens and elites in countries with a long tradition of heavily-subsidized prices. EU-induced energy reforms thus have important social implications and affect other public policies. The risk of alienating a large share of the population as energy poverty risks looms, on the one hand, and pressure from incumbent businesses to constrain competition in the sector, on the other hand, seems to be slowing down otherwise successful sectoral developments.

For more, stay posted for our January newsletter! You can also find information about the event (in Ukrainian) on the National Academy for Public Administration of Ukraine’s website:

This paper discusses the main strands of Turkey’s post-Cold War foreign policy in its post-Soviet Black Sea neighbourhood of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine with a focus on the period of Justice and Development Party rule (2002-2018). Based on the analysis of Turkey’s rhetorical stance towards the region’s countries and its actual interaction across five sectors – trade, energy, security, education/culture and migration – our findings demonstrate that the foreign policy rhetoric with its strong emphasis on historical ties, economic and energy cooperation and support for regional countries’ territorial integrity is not matched by Turkey’s observable engagement. An important factor for the mismatch between rhetoric and engagement is that relations with the region are seen at least partly through the prism of Turkey’s more salient relations with Russia.

Armenia’s ‘Velvet Revolution’: Whither Change?

by Laure Delcour & Katharina Hoffmann

“In spring 2018, the installation of former President Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister – a scenario which would have enabled the incumbent elite to maintain their grip over Armenia – unexpectedly failed to materialise. The 2015 constitutional referendum that transferred key powers to the prime minister as of spring 2018 paved the way for this swap scenario. Instead, on April 23rd, the newly appointed Prime Minister (and former President) Serzh Sargsyan resigned amidst a wave of protests that swept the country. This outcome to the demonstrations took many observers by surprise.

Admittedly, over the past decade, Armenia has been home to frequent protests against the ruling elite. In 2008, the flawed presidential elections that brought Serzh Sargsyan to power were followed by a brutal crackdown on protesters, killing at least ten people. None of the prior protests led to changes as substantial as the ones Armenia has experienced since spring 2018, though. In light of the authorities’ record of excessive use of force, there was little reason to believe that the 2018 protests would not end up with a brutal crackdown, thereby perpetuating the rule of the incumbent elite through a constitutional change. The scenario made possible by the constitutional amendments was also likely to materialise given its success in other post-Soviet countries, primarily Russia (Armenia’s strategic partner). Yet contrary to all expectations, the founder of the Civil Contract party and leader of the demonstrations, Nikol Pashinyan, was elected prime minister in early May 2018, raising considerable expectations among the Armenian population. ”

EU-STRAT Policy Brief No. 3 analyses how the EU communicates via official channels, what messages and news about the EU are disseminated by media in the Eastern neighbourhood countries (Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine) and finally how these messages are received by citizens. In addition, authors compares the EU’s communication strategy to that of other actors present in the region, especially Russia, and its tools and communicative strategies.

EU-STRAT Policy Brief No. 2 shares the results of analysis on the strategies of the EU and other external actors towards the EaP region, which can be either competing or complementary. Recommendations are made for how the EU can engage with these actors (Russia, China, NATO, the U.S., international finance institutions, EU member states) across the fields of trade, energy, security and migration, to ensure greater coherence and positive impact.

A year on, we look back at our Midterm Conference, which took place from 5-6 October 2017 at Vilnius University’s Institute of International Relations and Political Science. Enjoy conference snippets and highlights in this short video!

On 7 July, the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe at the University of St Gallen together with the Leibniz Institute for East and South East European Studies Regensburg organized a one-day workshop on the future of secessionist conflicts in the wider Black Sea region. The event was held in Bucharest at the New Europe College and brought together mostly young researchers from Germany, Switzerland, Georgia, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czechia, Russia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. In three sessions, participants sought to establish the state of the art in the field of research on secessionist conflicts and – inspired by the University of St Gallen’s research as part of EU-STRAT’s work package 3 – to deliberate on the interdependencies of different secessionist conflicts.

Panel I explored the issue of commonalities and differences between protracted conflicts by focusing on the cases of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea and Republika Srpska. For one, it touched upon the philosophical question of under which circumstances secession can be justified and whether in the wake of Putin’s justification for annexing Crimea secession may become regularized rather than remain reserved only to extremely oppressed peoples. The argument was made that the Russian foreign policy elite’s approaches to separatist statelets changed not in 2014 but in 2008 following the war in Georgia and Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Moreover, it was emphasized how important not only the ethnic imaginary but also an idealized memory of the Socialist social order was for secessionism and how detrimental intrusive policies by the EU could be – for instance in Bosnia-Herzegovina – for the growth of a culture of democratic accountability.

The second panel concentrated on interdependencies between protracted conflicts in the post-Soviet space and delved into the particularities of relations between Russia and Transnistria as well as the economic cost of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. There are some forms of institutionalized exchange between the ‘post-Soviet four’ but the lack of further cooperation is not only due to the preference for other relations (e.g. to Russia) but to different ambitions among local elites and some level of competition over international recognition. Whereas in general the level of the client states’ leeway towards the patron is proportional to the severity of the security threat, for the post-Soviet space the global financial crisis marked a turning point as fiscal dependence on Russian aid reduced agency substantially. The militarization and brinkmanship of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict meanwhile not only imposes high economic costs on states and communities but also negatively effects education, services, corruption and democracy.

In the third panel on the role of international actors, presentations dealt with the international community’s stabilization dilemma and with the contentious part played by international organizations in shaping dialogue and confidence-building measures in Ukraine and Moldova. As unilaterally seceding entities can subsist even without international recognition, the international community faces the insoluble dilemma that efforts to stabilize the situation on the ground, for example through development work, run counter to efforts to stabilize the international state system. In the case of Ukraine, efforts by the EU and OSCE to foster track 2 and track 3 forms of dialogue in a process of orchestration were hampered by very different understandings among Ukrainian stakeholders of what actually constituted dialogue. Similarly, different agendas among donors and the Moldovan government have created downsides for civilian confidence-building measures regarding relations between Transnistria and the right-bank.

The panels were followed by a collective brainstorming session to develop new avenues for the future of this research field and to sow the seeds for collaborative research projects. One strand of argument arose over the need to provincialize the post-Soviet space and to engage more directly with research on secessionist conflicts in other world regions such as Africa as well as with more theoretical approaches from the field of conflict studies and international relations theory. Overall, the workshop benefitted from a very open and collegial atmosphere and there was a general sense that it would lead to further get-togethers in the near future.

This paper discusses the role of statehood and limited statehood in relation to societal orders in Belarus and Ukraine. We conceptualize state capacity as a crucial factor affecting open and closed access orders and define its key elements. We investigate specifically public service provision by state and non-state actors, while recognizing that security and control over territory are other important aspects of statehood which are problematic in Ukraine. Our empirical investigation of key public services covers, on the one hand, elements affecting public service provision such as public administration reform and independence, and on the other hand, the actual state of basic services. We find that healthcare, postal services and public transport are better developed in Belarus than in Ukraine. This reliable provision of public services likely contributes to the stability of the limited access order in Belarus. At the same time, politicization of the Belarusian public administration and authoritarian centralization of government institutions affect other public services and continue to represent a threat to the economy in Belarus. Ukraine, in contrast, while struggling to deliver some public goods and services, is taking important steps in public administration reform. This could result in creating a more professional and independent public administration in Ukraine and, in the long-term, an opening of access to public services on a more universal basis.

We are pleased to share with you the fifth newsletter of the EU-STRAT project.

Over the last months, we published another four working papers, two reports, and a policy comment, with a policy brief to follow later this month. To catch up on anything you might have missed, check out our website and most recent publications.

Besides a look at some of our latest working papers, this newsletter shares the discussions from our recent policy briefing in Chișinău, as well as an interview with Dumitru Alaiba, Program Director at CPR Moldova, on the critical role of civil society in Moldova.